Greece votes No

Greeks have voted overwhelmingly “No” in a historic bailout referendum, partial results show, defying warnings from across Europe that rejecting new austerity terms for fresh financial aid would set their country on a path out of the euro.

With nearly a fifth of the votes counted, official figures showed 60.4 per cent of Greeks on course to reject a bailout offer from creditors that was the official issue of the ballot.

The figures showed the Yes vote drew 40.1 per cent. An official projection of the final result is expected this morning (NZT).

This is the right result. Greece needs to effectively declare bankruptcy, default on its debts, and start again with new lesser value currency.

Officials from the Greek government, which had argued that a “no” vote would strengthen its hand to secure a better deal from international creditors after months of wrangling, immediately said they would try to restart talks with European partners.

“The negotiations which will start must be concluded very soon, even within 48 hours,” Government spokesman Gabriel Sakellaridis told Greek television.” We will undertake every effort to seal it soon.”

Euclid Tsakalotos, the Government’s chief negotiator said talks could restart as early as Sunday evening.

They’re dreaming or lying. There is no path forward now with the creditors.

Just as Greece has every right to declare the terms on which more money was offered to them to be unacceptable, other countries have every right to stop lending them money. Borrowing money is a privilege, not a right, for countries.

Related Stories

Comments (111)

Ugly Truth, this community puts things in perspective and not your more overtly Anti Jewish interpretation,

No, it ignores the context which describes usury and the possession of the land (i.e the land of the Abrahamic covenant).

Also, the interpretation isn’t anti-Jewish because it was just for the Israelites to drive out the inhabitants of the land. Of course the inhabitants were not simply driven out, and the Israelites suffered for the blood that they spilled.

Sponge

So many people above don’t know the significance of a usurious, credit based monetary system and how it destroys everybody who joins in the party except the money changers themselves.

It is why Jesus kicked them out of the temple.
It is why the USA made gold and silver their money.
It is why the Greek people told the EU to take a hike.

People on this blog are supposed to be right leaning yet they seem to cheer on the mega Socialist construct of the EU.

We need to take a leaf out of the books of our ancestors, who, when they wrote Magna Carta, knew the dangers of usury as evidenced by clauses 10 and 11:
(10) If anyone who has borrowed a sum of money from Jews dies before the debt has been repaid, his heir shall pay no interest on the debt for so long as he remains under age, irrespective of whom he holds his lands. If such a debt falls into the hands of the Crown, it will take nothing except the principal sum specified in the bond.

(11) If a man dies owing money to Jews, his wife may have her dower and pay nothing towards the debt from it. If he leaves children that are under age, their needs may also be provided for on a scale appropriate to the size of his holding of lands. The debt is to be paid out of the residue, reserving the service due to his feudal lords. Debts owed to persons other than Jews are to be dealt with similarly

I think about it this way. If the intention of Greece’s PM and Finance Minister had been to never capitulate to a deal, but to drag things out for as long as possible so as to maximise the amount of EU money they syphoned in before they finally ran out of room, what exactly would they have done differently than what they are currently doing?

Seen through those eyes, it’s entirely possible, even I think likely, that that’s exactly what they’re doing. And in that context, the trigger for the referendum wasn’t the debt default, it was the point where the ECB stopped giving their banks a few billion Euro a week in liquidity – effectively additional debts that Greece was running up to the remainder of the EU.

The reality here is that Greece cannot and will not pay back the debts. Loaning them more money is good money after bad. There’s everything in it for the Greeks to continue borrowing whilst the EU dither, but ultimately they’ll end up defaulting. Cut off the flow of money.

V

V

@EAD

I completely agree with you. Loans create deposits. And that most of what people think as ‘money’ in the system is debt.
Frankly embarrassing for a so-called right wing blog.

I was reading an interesting piece today that talked about political systems in the West now represent the tyranny of the centre and ironically it is going to take parties that will be described as ‘extreme’ right wing or ‘extreme’ left wing to budge these busted on barnacles too afraid to risk any slight policy change. Of course there is nothing ‘extreme’ about them, as the definition of extreme has now become anything the centre doesn’t like, no matter how good an idea it actually is.
Key is a classic example, remember when Working for Families was “Communism by Stealth”, since then all he has done is juice it up.

Suffice it to say I don’t know enough about Syriza, and it is untested in the long term. But what I do know is that they didn’t cause the current situation in Greece to come about. They are the product of trying to enforce ridiculous debt repayments while simultaneously reducing ones income! Madness!

It’s good to see a few other Kiwibloggers such as V, Boris Piscana, Soundhill, Hugh Paveltich, Fentex & Simon amongst others actually “get it” and are not fooled by the simple “socialist government = bad” rhetoric used to simplify a complex argument. Even Stephieboy in her earlier posts in this thread appears to “get it”

Still need to do a bit of work on the Ed Snacks, Burts, Srubones and many other “right wingers” of this world though!

So in big bold letters:

“In order for capitalism to operate, and not live in a zombie economy, failure must be allowed. The constant manipulation downwards of interest rates and bailing out of individuals, banks, companies and countries in order to save creditors is not capitalism. Making risky loans must have a consequence and that consequence includes default and loss of creditors money (even if they didn’t really lose anything except fractionally reserved created currency)”

This is exactly why binding referenda should ****never**** be introduced within New Zealand. Look at Greece’s current referendum as a good example. Hastily organised, perhaps without a significant proportion of the population understanding what they were endorsing or embracing kneejerk populism. As far as I’m concerned, this may set the stage for other plebiscites the left does not want, such as anti-immigrant ones. What about the Golden Dawn neofascists?